水を飲む

In daily life, you will likely conjugate this. Use 水を飲みます to be polite to strangers or bosses. Use 水飲む with your close friends or family. If you want to sound a bit more refined, add an お to make it お水を飲む. It sounds softer and more polite. You can also turn it into a question by raising your voice at the end: 水飲む？ (Want some water?). It is a very versatile building block for your Japanese.

Use it when you are thirsty after a long walk. Use it at a restaurant when the waiter asks for your order. Use it when you are reminding a friend to stay hydrated in the humid Japanese summer. It is perfect for texting a roommate to ask if they need a bottle of water from the store. You can even use it in a medical context when a doctor asks about your habits. It is a safe, go-to phrase for any time of day.

Do not use this for taking medicine. Even though you use water, the phrase for medicine is 薬を飲む. Also, avoid using it if you are drinking something that isn't plain water. If it has tea leaves or carbonation, use the specific name of the drink instead. While technically correct, saying 水を飲む for a bowl of soup sounds a bit odd. For soup, you usually just say 飲む or even 食べる (to eat) if it has lots of ingredients.

Japan is famous for its high-quality tap water. In most cities, you can drink straight from the faucet without a second thought. When you enter a restaurant, you will almost always be served a glass of free cold water immediately. This is part of "Omotenashi," or Japanese hospitality. Because of this, asking for お水 is very common and never seen as a burden. In summer, you will see vending machines everywhere selling bottled water to combat the intense heat.

お水を飲む is the most common polite variation. You might also hear 水分補給をする (suibun hokyuu o suru), which means "to hydrate." If you are at a bar and want to stay sober, you might ask for 和らぎ水 (yawaragimizu), which is water served alongside sake. For cold water specifically, people often say 冷たい水を飲む. If you want plain hot water, that is called 白湯 (sayu), not just hot water.